BLIND ALLEY-GORIES.

By Dunno Währiar.

(Translated from the original Lappish by Mr. Punch's own Hyperborean Enthusiast.)

No. IV.—Signs and Wonders.

I sat on the beach one forenoon in midsummer. A great number of people were doing much the same. The rhapsodists and orators, the blameless Ethiopians with their barbaric instruments of music, the itinerant magicians with their wands, the statuesque groups posed before the tripod of the photographer, the snow-white sea-chariots with crimson wheels, the bare-legged riders on antique steeds, made me fancy I was gazing at a scene of Southern Hellenic life. Why I know not—for it was not in the least like.

Then I saw an enormous black hand stretch down over the fjord. I was not alarmed, for I am becoming accustomed to apparitions of this kind.

It set weird signs and black marks upon the railings of the jetty, and on the white sides of the bathing machines, and on the sails of the fishing-boats, and when I turned about, the parade itself was plastered with tablets.

And on all things had the New Lawgiver incised in letters of gold and azure and purple upon shining tables the new commandments: "Use Skäuerskjin's Soap!"; "Try Tommeliden Tonic!"; "Buy Boömpvig's Pills!"; "Ask for Baldersen's Hairwash!"

And I heard the voice of the wild waves saying, as they lapped up over the cheap sandshoes and saturated paper bags full of gingerbread nuts:

"This is the new moral law. That men should cherish the outside and insides of their bodies, and keep them clean, like precious vessels of brass and copper. Rather to let the picturesque perish than forget for a moment which is the best soap for the complexion, and which will not wash clothes. Never to see a ship spreading her canvas like a sea bird without associations of a Purifying Saline Draught or a Relishing Pickle. To ask and see that ye procure!"

Then I looked into the heavens above me, and behold, high above the esplanade hung a hand, enormous as the one that had set its marks on everything below, but white, white; and it held a brush and wrote until the sky was full of signs, and they had form and colour, but not of this world, and those who ran could read them.

And I bought a shell-box and a bath bun, and closed my eyes, and lay musing in an agony of soul. Suddenly I felt the pain snap, and something grow in me, and I saw in my soul's dawning the great half-opened shell of a strange oyster.

And this oyster has its bed on my very heart, and it is my salt tears that nourish it, and it grows inside, invisible to all but me.

But I know that, when the oyster opens, I shall find within its shell, like a gleaming dove-coloured pearl, the great Panacea of the To Be; and, if you ask me to explain my meaning more fully, I reply that the bearings of this blind allegory lie in the application thereof, and that ye are a blow-fly brood of dull-witted hucksters.